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My car

Monday, July 11


My car lease ends tomorrow, so I just cleaned out pretty much everything that had been accumulating inside.
Including: too many CDs, lots of plastic wrap from cigarettes, inexplicably sticky coins, books I forgot I bought from Goodwill, tripod I used maybe twice, two soft blankets, lots of trash and crumpled receipts, pair of perfectly good shoes I forgot I had, and one intact cigarette. I am smoking it now even though I kind of quit. Feels appropriate, with a mostly clean car that is mostly mine but not really.

The inside is still coated, though, with dust. My dead skin, cigarette ash, fast food dust, probably, if that is a thing. It's a pretty thick layer. If only I could scoop it up and save it in a nice, pretty urn. "My First Car (Lease)."

But as I clean it, I feel guilty about all my "privilege." I am ashamed of how long it took me to realize this and how I am still realizing it now. I think about how self-absorbed and distracted I am every day. How wasteful and unsustainable my life feels sometimes. The time I waste thinking up things to try and forget the next day.

It feels crazy hard to do simple things sometimes. Like, getting a haircut. Why do I make things so difficult for myself?

Anyway, after I return the car tomorrow, I get to drive my uncle's BMW while I look for another car. I wish I was lower class. Which is such a dumb thing to think, but I honestly do think I live my life that way sometimes. Even though I know it sounds like a stupid joke. I don't even know what that means.

P.S. One of those books is called "The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down" and I might actually read it but the text is dauntingly small and the book is very thick. One day, though.